 Let's jump into this topic, heavy topic, topic. So over the last week, we've gotten this flurry of, I don't know, people being upset, attempts to cancel, people, you know, just freaking out over issues that relate to race. Frank, thank you. Not Frank. Thank you. Really appreciate it. We have Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan talking about shades of black and what does black even mean? I'll show you the video clip of that. People are freaking out. It turns out that a lot of musicians are leaving Spotify not because of COVID, but they're leaving Spotify because of this one minute segment that I will show you on Joe Rogan. We got President Biden announcing to the world that he intends his next nominee to be a black woman. That's it, a black woman, best black woman he can find nominee for the Supreme Court. Not the best judge, not the best person, not the most ideologically sound whatever his ideology is, no, it's going to be a black woman. And of course, this is not the first time we had, we had presidents say, and I think Trump said this, that he wants to nominate a woman, and we've had nominated an African American, and now it's this particular category. And we had Elia Shapiro, Elia Shapiro, we'll talk about Elia in a little while, comment on that. And because of an ill-worded tweet is now on administrative leave, while an investigation is being mounted, as if you had to investigate, the tweet is like only so many characters, you can figure out what it says. So it's, so Elia is now, and I know Elia is a good guy, and he has now kind of been, and as a sit-in, this is in Georgetown University, a sit-in, to demand that he just be fired and kicked out. And then, just if you thought things weren't crazy enough, and then Whoopi Goldberg, on the view, from the view, on the view, said something about the Holocaust not really being about race, because it wasn't about black and white. And then she apologized, and she said, well when I think about race, the context is black and white, and I know why people offended and I apologize, and she has been put on leave, forced leave from the view for two weeks, and she's furious about this, she's been canceled, how dare they cancel Whoopi Goldberg, and she is threatening to leave the view. There's a tragedy for you. And all of this, a Jews race, how black is black to be counted as black, should we be associating Supreme Court justice nominees with a color of skin? All of this is just insanity, insanity, and brings to the forefront the whole question of what is race, does it exist, is it important, why does it matter, is Whoopi right, maybe the Holocaust wasn't about race, certainly it wasn't about skin color, or is Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan right, and in a sense, they don't say this, race is a fiction. So that's what we're going to talk about today, and all in the context of it, I want to say this upfront, and I'll repeat this as we go, because I think it's important. An important context here is that discrimination against people of different skin color, discrimination against people with a different, I don't know, ethnic background and religious background, are real things, horrific things, evil things, and that people justifiably are very sensitive around these issues because there's a long history of discriminating against people with dark skin, of discriminating against Jews. Racism, that is, whether you believe that race exists or not, attributing, attributing importance to other people's biological attributions that have nothing to do with a character, no intelligence as individuals, that is evil and disgusting and horrible, but it has existed. It is a real phenomena. So a race, in my view, is not a real phenomena. It's a made up thing. Racism is a real phenomenon, and one, that I can understand why people are sensitive about it because six million Jews died in a Holocaust, African Americans were enslaved for well over a hundred years, and even when they were not enslaved, they were horrifically discriminated against. So it's real. It's real and needs to be acknowledged as such. But there is a question. There is a question. What is race even mean? What is it? What are the borders? What distinguishes? And what is its importance? Now one's background is important for a variety of reasons. For example, health-wise, where you come from, or even where your ancestors come from, or the group they belong to has importance because there are certain diseases that are in group, there are certain phenomena that are associated with that. So for health it's important, but for what else? For what else? So health care should take into account your genes, your genetic makeup, and health care should be taken into account who your ancestors were. But that doesn't define a race. Indeed if you consider Jews a race, well some diseases are associated with European Jews but are not associated with North African Jews or Central Asian Jews. So what matters for those diseases is not that you're Jewish, but that you're Jewish and that you're from Europe. Is that a sub-race of the broader race? It just all doesn't matter and categorizing things as race is useless. So absolutely your genes matter, particularly for medicine. Maybe only for medicine. I don't know for what else. That's pretty stupid and disgusting, Richard. Where do these people come from who think they can, I'm not even going to repeat it because it's despicable and disgusting and stupid, stupid, yes I am because that's what, what you write statements like that, that's what you deserve, that's exactly what you deserve. So yeah, your genes matter for health. For what else? What else do your genes matter for? I mean to other people, to you they matter, but to other people what do they matter for? For nothing, for nothing. Race is not really an idea, a concept. It was a word used in English language going back to 16th century, but as a category to categorize people not by genes, not by features. It's only in the 18th century and the 19th century that the concept of race as we know it today developed. And even then, it was much broader or much more narrow, if you will, than the way we think about it today. For example, there were thinkers in England who were trying to figure out among the English which groups among the English produced the geniuses and the successes and the success stories and therefore were inherently as groups superior to others and they should be the aristocrats and they should get privileges and all kinds of things like that. So trying to categorize little groups, not for the purpose of just understanding, you know, what does this culture provide, what does that culture, the genetics of it and so on, but to actually give some people privilege, some people positions, to discriminate against individuals based on which group they belong to. Now, Ayn Rand correctly said that racism is the most primitive form of collectivism in a sense, the ugliest form of collectivism, the most mindless form of collectivism. And in the 19th century, they were trying to categorize people all over the place, so white people were categorized among other things. I mean, Marx talks about the Slavic race as something we want to get rid of and it's not very good. And yeah, the Germans, a lot of this stuff was being done in America, sadly, the eugenics movement, a lot of the eugenics movements was initiated or developed and grew substantially in early 20th century America. Germany jumped all over this partially to try to inspire their own sense of worthiness out of their inferiority complex to try to justify their superiority in the world. And they started defining all the other races, including defining Jews as a race. I mean, Jews has always been discriminated against for a million different reasons, the Nazis defined them as a race, and defined all kinds of other people as races. And none of that matters. None of it matters. The fact that one group has an IQ on average higher than another group matters zero. Nothing, zilch, to evaluating any particular individual from that group. Not to mention the problems with IQ tests, which I'm not going to get into today, you know, the problems up the kazoo of IQ tests. Why the interest even? Why the interest in evaluating IQs of groups? Who cares? Why doesn't matter? What importance does it have? Who benefits from it? Only the racists. Nobody else. Only the racists. I mean, an individual's level of intelligence is important to the extent that IQ measures it. Intelligent tests are important for hiring, important for evaluating candidates for graduate work, for students. But I can tell you that my wife is a higher IQ than I do. There's no question about that. She scores off the charts on IQ tests. And she is not an Ashkenazi Jew. She is part of the inferior group that Richard is referring to, inferior in quotes, group of Sephardic Jews. So what differences does it make if on average her group scores less? It's just an excuse for people to behave badly. It's just an excuse for people to be racist. It's just an excuse for people to find justifications that validate their biases to begin with. I don't think race exists. I think it's a bogus concept. I think it's a bogus idea. I think it's an invalid concept. I think it aggregates concepts that are supposed to improve efficiency. They're supposed to make us more efficient thinkers. They're supposed to take a multitude of observations and identify something that's in common, but there's nothing important in common here. And then, of course, in America, at least in 24th century America, racism has come to only mean, or race has come to only mean, the difference between white and black. That is the only meaning of the concept of race is not the subtle differences that the Nazis found in different people. The subtle differences that a British race theorist of the 19th century found in different people, but black versus white versus brown. Skin color, which is even more stupid and barbaric, because skin color means nothing. Zero, zilch. I mean, as I told you, the most successful immigrant group to the United States today, the most successful immigrant group to the United States today in terms of salaries, wages, in terms of education, education achievement, educational attainment by far is the blackest immigrant group. That is the Nigerians. So what does it mean that some people with some skin color test differently than people with other skin color, and who the hell cares? So it's, you know, disgusting, despicable. This elevation of race, the importance placed on race, and this is not, this is everywhere in the political spectrum. This is left and right. This is people using color of skin for victimhood and for special rights and for special privileges and for Supreme Court seats, grievances. I mean, historically justified. But the solution is not more emphasis on skin color, more focus on the unimportant, the insignificant. It's just truly, truly horrific. And this is reinforced by things like, you know, let's nominate a black female to the Supreme Court. Yes, there are no black females on the Supreme Court right now. Now, maybe some of that is racism. Maybe the origins of that, some of that is discrimination from the past. Maybe there were highly qualified women, more qualified than anybody else who were black and who were not nominated because of the bigotry of the time. But you don't solve that bigotry. You don't solve that bigotry by being a bigot, by making skin color, by making sex, the determining factor. Thank you for listening or watching The Iran Book Show. If you'd like to support the show, we make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me. You get value from listening. You get value from watching. Show your appreciation. You can do that by going to iranbrookshow.com slash support. By going to Patreon, subscribe star, locals, and just making an appropriate contribution on any one of those channels. Also, if you'd like to see The Iran Book Show grow, please consider sharing our content and of course, subscribe. Press that little bell button right down there on YouTube so that you get an announcement when we go live. And for those of you who are already subscribers and those of you who are already supporters of the show, thank you. I very much appreciate it.